


Percival David Graves

by inb4invert



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), The Lobster (2015)
Genre: Body Image, Don't copy to another site, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 21:05:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19342624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inb4invert/pseuds/inb4invert
Summary: It was the closet that did it in the end. Not the one he'd been kept in for months, surprisingly enough--andMerlin, you'd think that would be the one, if any. But no, it was his own clothes closet, expanded to fit a wall-to-wall collection of elegantly tailored suits.





	Percival David Graves

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experimental idea I've been kicking around for a while, which I'll explore in smaller "moments."
> 
> I'm quite in love with Colin's portrayal of David in The Lobster, and it gave rise to this premise: 
> 
> We don't and likely never will know who the "real" Percival Graves was. But what if he was never the witheringly handsome and successful template we see in the film? What if THAT Graves was a concoction of Grindelwald's, built off of the life and identity of a previously overlooked mild Macusa office clerk that nobody would've scrutinized enough to know what is or isn't out of character for him? What if everyone just thought this quiet man trimmed down a few pounds, gained some confidence overnight and started winning?  
> Once found and rescued, this chubby unassuming REAL Graves would have to reconcile himself to knowing what might've been his, how well-loved he might've been, if only. And what would poor Credence see in this broken-down man, if he came looking?

It was the closet that did it in the end. Not the one he'd been kept in for months, surprisingly enough--and _Merlin_ , you'd think that would be the one, if any. But no, it was his own clothes closet, expanded to fit a wall-to-wall collection of elegantly tailored suits. A small shelf had been added to one side, neatly lined with an array of shoes still beautifully polished and showing no sign of the terrible paths they'd carried their wearer. No spot of blood or ash of crumbled brick. No dark wisp of that poor creature Graves had been told about, the one who'd been lured to his death dazzled to the very end by the gleam of Graves's own stolen grin. 

Percival David Graves had, after everything, been fully conquered by his own clothes closet, teeming with someone else's wardrobe in a terribly mocking final blow. Standing at its open door, he'd reached a trembling hand towards a small box balanced on the shelf and clumsily knocked it down (because of _course_ he had). Cufflinks and jewel-studded tie pins scattered to the floor, one silver ring escaping to roll a lazy path past his foot, settling itself promptly underneath the bed. The greater part of him longed to follow, to curl up on the floor amidst the several week's dust and simply hide. Instead, he ran one tentative palm over the shining sleeve of the nearest jacket, feeling the frisson of dark magic that still stubbornly clung to its fine threads. And then he staggered back, shaking the sting of ugly intentions from his palm and thinking: _they liked Him better, even still._

With the first sniffling sob (even in despair, he had to be meek about it, didn't he), he sat down hard at the edge of the bed and wept himself empty. 

Because it _was_ an emptiness, to come back to his life and find how lonely and lackluster it truly proved, now that he'd seen something grand he might compare it against. That first heart-soaring moment of unbelieving relief at being freed had guttered out quickly enough, dampened by the confusion, the palpable _disappointment_ in the eyes of his rescuers. 

They'd found him--after months of having been gone, lost and scared and suffering--they'd found him and he wasn't the _him_ they were looking for. And how apt was that, really? Had anyone ever gone out of their way to seek him out, or even missed him terribly much? More often than not, he could just as easily not be there at all, sitting right in plain sight. 

But when he'd seen the newspaper photos and the memories swirling round the high security pensieve… when he'd seen the dashing Percival Graves, Director of Magical Security and bonafide _rising_ star… Of course they'd gone looking for him. And really, he couldn't blame them. They'd wanted him back fervently, and they'd likely continue wanting him back even with the real thing right in their midst again, timidly shuffling papers and apologizing under his breath just as he'd always done. 

So there he was, back in the quiet little flat he'd pined for endless, terrible days; back in his old life and nearly buckling under the weight of what a raging success someone had made of it in his absence. He never would have thought it before--but it had been a kindness, a wonderful soft dream, believing that his lot in life was set. Knowing he was simply _David_ and there was no point in striving to be anyone else. That dashing face brooding out from the pages of the New York Ghost would smirk at him in the mirror for the rest of his life, reminding him of what he could have, of who he could be, if only he could manage to stop being himself. 

What it all amounted to was that he cried that first night home, softly and then progressively louder--an indulgence he rarely allowed himself, even in private. After all he'd been through, there was no comfort to be found within the walls that had happily housed his lost potential, however falsely it had gleamed. He cried until he felt hollow and raw, weak with the exhaustion of his own anticlimactic resurrection. And then, still fully clothed in the only remaining outfit he owned that actually _fit_ , he slept. 

 

Sometime in the night, Graves woke to the sound of quiet weeping and it took him one very long, confused moment to understand that it wasn't himself he was hearing. 

He reached for his spectacles, which he'd earlier placed carefully on the bedside table, just as carefully moving now out of rising fear. In the dark, he heard the crying pause long enough to make room for a startled breath, knowing that whoever was there now saw he'd woken. Perhaps he'd been freed only to be killed on his first night home, but it wasn't bravery that had him pushing his spectacles onto his face and blinking at the shadows. Only something more like resignation, a half-formed drowsy thought that felt a lot like _wouldn't that just be the way._

There, pressed up against the wall near the foot of the bed, hunched over leaking tears with all the morose determination of a dripping faucet, was Credence Barebone. Graves hadn't known his _own_ beautifully transfigured face at first, had needed to squint in order to see himself in its chiselled lines, but somehow he knew the Barebone boy without a moment's questioning. Even stoop-shouldered as he was, he was all angles: pale and gaunt as a spectre, the spindly spider-leg length of him smoking at the seams to bleed a sinister density into the clustering gloom. An albatross all clad in black, come to hang round Graves's bent neck. 

"Are you a ghost?" Graves asked stupidly. 

Credence's head jerked up somehow limp and tense all at once, like a marionette set to dancing under someone else's command. A being governed by habitual reaction alone, malleable to nothing but his own hard-bought self preservation. Beneath the blunt and jagged cap of his dark hair, his eyes remained downcast, looking without seeing. Graves was reminded then of a trembling bat, _listening_ its way through the darkness, knowing the lay of the land by the faintest of far-off sounds. 

"You're not him," was all he said by way of answer. He wielded his words with a practiced softness, a hesitance against speaking--but underneath that thinness was the creak of a heavy door, seldom opened and groaning with the years of gathered rust. 

"I..." Graves began. As little as he'd said, the boy had spoken the plainest of truths, like a prophet come too late. Graves already knew, and lacked the strength or even the desire to argue it. 

"No," he said. "I'm not him." 

Spoken aloud, there was more shame in that utterance than he'd previously accounted for, a sort of finality. 

Finally, Credence's eyes raised just enough beneath his lowered brow to show the proof of his own terrible confession--white and cataract dull, a once-clear sky seething with ominous cloud. 

"No one's who they're supposed to be" he whispered mournfully as Graves followed the trail of another slow tear to watch it drip down the side of his nose. "Not even me." 

"Oh," he said. And then again, in realization: 

"Oh…."


End file.
